He had absolutely no need for her help since he already had checked and double-checked, but he sensed she needed something to distract her.
She obediently held the tape measure for him and he made a show of comparing the numbers on the tape to what he had already recorded in his phone.
When they finished, she spoke in a low voice he almost couldn’t hear.
“The day we had the accident, I found my dad kissing someone who wasn’t my mom.”
Bryce’s chest ached at her tormented expression. She sounded as if she had carried the pain for a very long time.
“You knew but your mom didn’t?”
Emma shook her head. “I couldn’t tell her. Especially not after he died. It would have destroyed her.”
Bryce could only imagine how Emma must have struggled with the secret. He hadn’t known her father at all but from everything he’d heard about Gary Lucas, the man was a saint. Everyone at Lucas Construction had nothing but wonderful things to say about him. Pam especially couldn’t sing his praises enough.
Suddenly all the pieces fell into jarring place. “Is that why Pam quit today?” he asked, before he could think better of it.
Emma stared at him. “She what?”
He immediately wished he hadn’t said anything, in case he was dreadfully wrong. “That’s what I heard, anyway. One of the other project managers texted me earlier today. He said she’s put in her two weeks’ notice but won’t be back in the office at all. It seemed like it came out of the blue.”
“I had no idea! My mom didn’t tell me. But I haven’t really talked to her today, I guess. She was out on a jobsite all morning and I’ve been here all afternoon.”
“Nobody was expecting it. But I guess if Pam was the one having an affair with your dad and your mom found out, it’s no wonder she left.”
“I never said it was Pam,” she said, but both of them knew he was right, especially when she covered her face with her hands. She didn’t cry but he could see her shoulders trembling and knew she was holding back a sob.
Aching for her, he reached out and pulled her into his arms. She resisted for only a second or two before she sagged against him, her arms sliding around his waist.
“Catching my dad making out with another woman was the most horrible moment of my life. For about an hour, anyway, until thetrulymost horrible moment of my life happened on the cliff road.”
“Oh, Emma. I’m sorry.”
“We were fighting about Pam when... when the accident happened. I told him he disgusted me. Those were the last things I ever said to him. How much I despised him.”
Now she did sob, a small, strangled sound that hit him harder than full-blown weeping might have.
“I didn’t. I loved him. But I was so angry at him for a long time.”
“It’s understandable. It must have felt like a betrayal.”
He could certainly relate. When his father had left his mother, Bryce had wanted to kill the man.
“I could never tell my mom. She loved him so much. I knew it would have devastated her to find out he was cheating on her.”
“But she found out anyway.”
“Last night I was fighting with Pam about what happened that day. My mom overheard. You should have seen her. She looked like she was the one who just crashed her car down a mountainside.”
“You should never have held it inside for so long.”
“What was I supposed to do? My dad was dead. What would have been the point in telling her? If he had lived, maybe they could have worked through it. Maybe he never even would have had an affair with Pam. He claimed they had only kissed, nothing more. Maybe that’s true. Maybe it never would have gone any further than that. We’ll never know, will we? Because I killed him.”
He pulled her back into his arms. “Hush. You did not. You were fifteen years old. You weren’t responsible for any of it. The accident was exactly that. An accident.”
“An accident that might not have happened if I hadn’t been so self-righteous and self-absorbed.”
“You can’t know that. You’re lucky to be alive. I wish you could focus on that instead of your guilt that is completely misplaced.”
